What’s the first thing that pops to mind when someone says, “I’m out walking the dog”?

Do you picture the animal? Or do you seize on the word walking? Maybe you do both -- or neither. The reaction is literally anyone’s guess.

People are good at talking but they usually have little idea how they’re being perceived by listeners, an old problem that gets a fresh look in Ben Bergen’s new book, “Louder than Words. Bergen is a cognitive scientist at the University of California, San Diego, where he uses a variety of tests and simulations to explore how the mind makes meaning.

It’s basic research. But Bergen’s work could help people connect, not just with each other, but with the ever-expanding tools of the modern age. Things like Apple’s Siri personal assistant and voice-activated email.

Ben Bergen recently published his first book, "Louder than Words: The New Science of How the Mind Makes Meaning." Basic Books

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Ben Bergen recently published his first book, "Louder than Words: The New Science of How the Mind Makes Meaning."

We spoke at length to Bergen about his research, letting him take the lead in a conversation that showed just how evocative a simple question can be.

Bergen: One of my favorite quotes is attributed to Groucho Marx: Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. Have you heard it before? And what were you thinking when you did?

U-T San Diego: I have heard the quote. Your question immediately made me think of watching Marx Bros. movies on a black-and-white Zenith TV when I was a kid. I thought of the episode in which they make a transatlantic crossing and chaos ensues.

People can have very different reactions to the mention of something like the name of actor Groucho Marx.
Paramount Pictures

People can have very different reactions to the mention of something like the name of actor Groucho Marx.

Bergen: What’s neat about your answer is that because you’re familiar with the saying, your reaction to it is all about the person who uttered it, and the context in which you might be most familiar with him. Part of understanding an utterance is accessing what you know about the person who said it. When I read writing by someone whose voice I’m familiar with -- take David Sedaris, for example -- I hear his voice in my head. And when I listen to Tina Fey’s book in the car, I see her face.

U-T San Diego: Does my reaction tell you something deeper about the way my mind works?

Bergen: It sure does. You’re a seriously visual individual. People vary in terms of what’s called their “cognitive style.” Some people (like me) are verbalizers. We’re really good at using words to do things. For instance, if I have to remember a list of numbers, I have to say them in my head. I can’t remember the numbers by staring at them and then recalling later what they looked like. Other people, like you it seems, are visualizers.

U-T San Diego: Is this kind of variation common?

Bergen: Super common. People differ in terms of how visual they are and even what kind of visual. There are people who tend to visualize objects. Others visualize spatial configurations. People also differ in how well they remember the precise words they just heard (or said!). There’s just natural variation in humans. It can be used to predict everything from how people will do in different parts of an IQ test to what profession they’ll end up in. It stands to reason that people tend to gravitate to things they’re better at.

In terms of language, this variation in humans means that you can say the very same words to two different people and they’ll do completely different things with them -- visualizing, verbalizing, or whatever. That means there isn’t any objective meaning in the words you use. There are just a variety of processes for making meaning. And you have to hope that the meaning you make matches the meaning that the person you’re talking to makes to a degree that allows you to more or less gel.

U-T San Diego: Would my reaction to the Groucho question have been different if you’d asked it while I was driving?

Bergen: When you’re using language while driving, you’re multitasking. Sometimes, that’s not too hard to do, like when you’re on a really boring stretch of highway. Other times, you just don’t have the mental resources to dedicate to two things at once. That’s a large part of what causes distracted driving. If you’re visualizing Groucho on your old television, you do that using parts of your brain dedicated to vision. And that becomes a problem if you need to use your brain at the very same time to see things that are actually in the world around you, like other cars or pedestrians.

U-T San Diego: Talking about Groucho puts me in a good mood. Wouldn’t I become a less stressed out driver?

Bergen: Regrettably, I don’t know of any research showing that. I do know that sometimes people appear to drive better when they’re talking on a mobile device. Long-haul truckers apparently have a trick to combat fatigue, which is to get on their CBs. And there’s some evidence that if the roadway is very predictable and if the main danger to the driver is falling asleep, then under those circumstances talking on a wireless device might increase alertness and increase driving safety. So it’s possible that under the right circumstances talking about Groucho would make you more alert, and that might help.

U-T San Diego: What if I tell you a story while I’m driving? Does that affect how well I drive?

Bergen: We don’t know exactly, but that’s actually the subject of a study we’re running right now using the driving simulator in my lab. We know that having a conversation on a mobile device makes it hard to drive. We suspect that part of the reason is that the driver feels pressure to hold up their end of a conversation, and not to reveal that theyre not paying complete attention to the conversation. So they don’t stop or slow down their speech, even when the roadway demands their attention. And that make it harder to both talk and drive at the same time, because the two tasks really are both demanding action at the same time. That would be a reason that talking to a passenger is safer than talking on the phone--the passenger knows youre driving and can see when a car tries to merge in front of you, or when the car ahead slams on its brakes. You can pause because you know that the passenger knows that youre mentally busy. At least thats what we suspect. Well know for sure when the data come in!

U-T San Diego: Who benefits from this deeper understanding of how we perceive words and sentences? The intelligence community? Come clean, Ben.

Bergen: I think we all benefit from discoveries about how language works in the brain. There are people who suffer from language disorders, either congenitally, or because of damage to their brain incurred later in life.

The more we understand about how the brain computes language in the typical case, the better the tools we’ll be able to develop to diagnose and treat these people. On another front, people really want to be able to talk to their electronic devices--take Siri, for example. The thing is that language understanding technology still doesn’t approach what humans can do. Part of the solution is to implement in technology the types of mechanism that humans use. But to do that, we need to study how human process language.

For obvious reasons, lots of agencies are interested in this stuff. As you intimated, some of the work in my lab is currently being funded by the U.S. intelligence community. I could tell you about it, but then, well, you know what I’m going to say next.